[governance] Internet Governance Debate (Silence and Fatigue)
Danny Butt
db at dannybutt.net
Sun Apr 22 19:38:20 EDT 2007
I also enjoyed the summary from Jovan and found it helpful for
crystallising a few features of the current situation.
1) If we accept that Internet Governance is a policy issue with a
complex scope and few urgent levers, there seems to me to be no great
pressure to come to the agreement Karl seeks on "What Internet
Governance includes or doesn't include." I think it is important to
keep an open mind on what it might or might not include, because
there are of course many public-policy issues arising from the
Internet's growth, and this group should avoid locking itself into a
policy platform that may become made obsolete very quickly in the
rapidly changing environment. Instead, there is the opportunity for
policy development in new areas not currently being addressed by
ICANN etc. I don't really see the Framework Convention or similar
intergovernmental process getting much leverage when the work which
seems to be required is clarification of the issues and downstream
effects. This is where the forum aspects of the IGF and the dialogue
mechanisms promoted by Bill make sense to me. The discussion has a
long way to go.
2) There are of course specific aspects to the governance of ICANN
and other coordinating bodies which are problematic or worse from a
developmental and rights perspective; and fail to effectively include
the relevant stakeholders. The people on this list working on those
issues display an understanding of the complex interrelation between
policy, technology, and social development -(and here i greatly
admire the work of the IGP even though I disagree with many of the
conclusions). Personally, I think this group could do more to support
collaborative online development of policy inputs related to specific
areas (TLDs, IDNs, DNSSEC, spam, etc etc etc), but as I have said
previously I don't think this is possible on a single mailing list of
this scope, where the natural tendency is to move discussions back to
first principles and ideological disagreements.
I have yet to see this group agree convincingly on who or what we are
supposed to be accountable to as "civil society". The cases that are
most often made in IG have a strong, distinctly Nth American "freedom
from governments" flavour that I see as part of the problem, rather
than the solution. My usual rule of thumb with groups is to not seek
strong conclusions where there are deep divisions on principles, so I
see this group as a valuable theatre for the rehearsal of various IG
positions, and hope we can keep it open to workshop a wide of a range
of scripts.
Regards,
Danny
On 23/04/2007, at 4:37 AM, Jovan Kurbalija wrote:
> Dear Wolfgang,
>
> You are right that IG is no longer on the radars of governments
> worldwide
> (if it ever was). There are many reasons for this. First--and the most
> important--is that the world has changed substantially between
> 2003, when IG
> was put on the WSIS agenda, and 2007.
>
> Back in 2003, the IG-debate was, to a large extent, "collateral
> damage" of
> the Iraq war. Today, the situation has substantially changed. In
> the US,
> there is strong political opposition to the Iraq war and a gradual
> move back
> to multilateralism (even in the field of environment!).
>
> Beside the suspicion about the US foreign policy, the second reason
> for
> initiating the IG-debate was the story that "a country can be
> removed from
> the Internet by the US government." It was a powerful trigger and
> it created
> concern among diplomats and policy-makers. It was the most frequent
> question
> I was asked by diplomats in Geneva. The story led to a crisis (at
> least in
> perception).
>
> After that... you know what has happened.... WGIG... discussion became
> substantive... there was an extensive learning process....
> Ultimately, it
> became clear that the theoretical possibility of removing a
> country's domain
> from the root zone file is not real possibility for various reasons,
> including decentralized root-servers and the possibility of creating
> parallel roots, etc.
>
> In fact, the power over the root server is an example of the
> paradox of
> power. The possibility of removing a country from the Internet can
> hardly be
> described as a power, since, effectively, it can never be used. The
> central
> element of power is forcing another side to act in the way the
> holder of
> power wants. The use of US power over the root could create a
> different
> outcome--that countries and regions establish their own Internets.
> The US
> would then be a bigger loser than the other players in a possible
> disintegration of the Internet. The US would face the loss of the
> predominance of US-promoted values on the Internet, English as the
> Internet
> lingua franca, and the global market for US-based Internet companies
> (Google, e-Bay, Yahoo,...).
>
> All in all, the two elements that shaped discussion back in 2003 do
> not
> exist any more (strong suspicion about US foreign policy,
> misperception of
> the possibility of removing countries from the Internet).
>
> Today? It is not very likely that the IG-debate will gain momentum.
> The
> reason is simple... there is no crisis. The Internet was created to
> survive
> a major “crisis” (nuclear war). The potential major failure of the
> Internet,
> which could trigger a strong policy reaction, is not likely to happen.
> Moreover, in the most recent crises (9/11, London terrorist attack,
> Tsunami), the Internet has proven itself the most reliable
> communication
> structure. The latest example of Internet robustness was the cut of
> the
> Asian telecom cable. While it slowed down Internet traffic and
> attracted a
> bit journalistic attention at Christmas, it did not create a major
> crisis.
>
> Without a crisis-driven process (fertile context for
> simplifications and
> stereotypes), ICANN and the US government have a unique chance to
> introduce
> a new and innovative global governance model, which should address
> a few
> open issues including involvement of other governments and
> internalization
> of ICANN’s status. They are no longer under "siege" as they were
> during the
> WSIS. It should provide them with more space for creative and
> forward-looking solutions. A promising sign was ICANN’s
> presidential debate
> on the future of ICANN. A potential problem is that there is no
> external
> pressure for reform. This list and GIGANet should help in
> discussing and
> proposing some policy solutions. In my “batch-processing” of latest
> messages, I will also reflect on the Framework Convention and
> Triangle/Variable Geometry of IG.
>
> Best, Jovan
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kleinwächter, Wolfgang
> [mailto:wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de]
> Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 09:03
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Alejandro Pisanty; Ian Peter
> Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: AW: [governance] Framework convention
>
> Alejandro:
>
> Not to speak of the once-held idea that there are a large number of
> organizations with a claim for relevance in Internet governance
> which do not
> comply with the WSIS criteria about which no-one has even started a
> discussion here.
>
> Wolfgang:
>
> The challenger in the WSIS process were members of the governmental
> stakeholder group. The EU wanted to have a new cooperation model with
> governments on the top ("on the level of principle"). Brazil wanted
> to have
> an Internet Convention. South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria,
> India and
> until PrepCom3 also the government of the Peoples Republic of China
> wanted
> to have an "Intergovernmental Internet Council". The ITU wanted to
> overtake
> some functions from ICANN and to play a greater (probably leading)
> role.
> WIPO, UNESCO, WTO, UNCTAD, ILO and other IGOs which have a stake in
> IG in
> its broader understanding (like multiligualism in UNESCO or IPR in
> WIPO) had
> a wait and see position with no big ambitions. The USG, supported
> by a broad
> range of private sector members and some civil society groups,
> opposed a
> broader role for governments.
>
> The result was the agreement to start a proces of enhanced
> cooperation (both
> on the intergovernmental level as well as among governmnetal and
> non-governmental stakeholders) but neither the form, the content, the
> procedure nor the final objective of the process was defined. Janis
> Karkelins, president of PrepCom of WSIS II and now the GAC chair,
> said three
> weeks after Tunis during the ICANN meeting in Vancouver that he
> does not
> understand what the governments (representing the heads of states
> of about
> 180 countries) decided in detail and he speculated that obviously
> even the
> governments have no clue what they want to do. When Nitin Desai
> started
> informal consultations on enhanced cooperation in May 2006, he told
> governments (and others) that they have to come with ideas how to
> bring
> butter to the sandwich. But nothing happend (in the public). There is
> (public) silence.
>
> No initiative from the EU. The only word came from Madame Reding
> when she
> applauded the JPA as a right step towards a new cooperation model.
> In May
> 2007 there is a meeting of the "High Level Internet Governace
> Working Group"
> of the EU and there had been consultatitons with the USG under the
> German EU
> presidency. But these meetings are closed shops. No agenda, no
> communique.
>
>
> Brazil has given up obviously its idea of an Inernet Convention? Or
> do they
> plan something for the Rio 2007 IGF? What about the supporters for the
> "Intergovernmental Internet Council" (look into the WGIG report)?
> Silence
> from South Africa to India to Iran. Did they give up? The Chinese
> government
> was happy with the Tunis Agenda which recognized "national
> soveriegnty" of
> the national domain name space. An own Internet root with TLD Root
> Zone
> files with Chinese characters (where the authorization of the
> publication of
> these zone files is done by the MII and not by the DOC) would
> obviously
> qualify for "national domain name space". So why the Chinese
> government
> should become active? They got what they wanted to have. They will
> also wait
> and see. (BTW does somebody know whether ICANN will have its fall 2007
> meeting in Taipeh and does somebody know what the position of the
> Chinese
> government, which more or less ignores up today the GAC, is in this
> question?)
>
> The ITU has started just recently a consultatiton with its members on
> enhanced coopweration according to reolsution 102 from Antalya. But
> the New
> ITU SG has made clear in his very first statements that he will not
> continue
> to push for ITU leadership in IG as Mr. Utsumi did. ITU under Toure
> wants to
> become the leader in Cybersecurity and Infrastructure, two important
> elements of IG in the broader understanding. And it will make
> contributions
> to iDNS, NGNs, ENUM, IPv6 etc. but not in competition to ICANN. But
> Toure,
> at the end of the day, is the voice of the member states. So lets
> wait and
> see whether the cancellation of his planned visit to the ICANN
> meeting in
> Lisbon in March 2007 was indeed for "technical reasons" only. WIPO,
> UNESCO,
> WTO etc. did not change their mind. They are waitng. If somebody
> will ask
> them to write a report what they have done in their field of
> competence for
> IG they will write the report, probably not more than five to ten
> pages. If
> nobody asks them, they will do nothing. But who has a mandate to
> ask for
> such a report?
>
> What can we learn and conclude from this, in particular with regad
> to IGF
> 2007? Shjuld we support the silence? Is there space for discussion?
> Any
> direction?
>
> Best regards
>
> Wolfgang
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--
Danny Butt
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Suma Media Consulting | http://www.sumamedia.com
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